Chapter 16 – Eighth Academy: Metal
When we awoke the next morning, Nymph was there to greet us. We packed our things, had a delicious meal from Wakko's magic fridge, and started on our way to the last academy. Before we left, Nymph said to us, "I'm not really supposed to tell you anything about the final test, but the creature you face is merciless and powerful. He has earned the nickname 'The Diamond Beast' and is nothing to take lightly. He even commands us guardian from time to time. That is all I can say to you. I wish you luck. And Ace," he looked at her with wonder and curiosity in his eyes. "You are lucky to have such friends with you, even if some of them are slightly nutty." She looked over at the Warners when she said that and there they were, Dot grabbing a hold of her ears and spinning her head like some kind of kid's toy, Wakko removing his head and beating Yakko's with it. Then they straightened up and gave us that goofy grin with halos appearing over their heads. Ace turned back to the guardian and said, "I know, thanks." We then all imagined us standing in front of the gates of the Silver Palace and Ace used the "tes macrinomb" spell to teleport us there. As we left, a large shadow loomed over Nymph. When she turned around to confront what made the shadow, she stopped in her tracks and doom painted itself on her face just as the shadow crashed over her and vanished into the ground, letting her horrified scream echo through the empty fields.
We reappeared at the front gates of the Silver Palace. "It looks like we've gotten the hang of using the tes macrinomb spell in masses." Dot pointed out. "Yah, even Runt might be able to cast a spell on his own now." I said sarcastically. Runt gasped with realization, "Ya think so Rita? Oh, that would be great, definitely, definitely great!" I just rolled my eyes in annoyance. "Now we gotta teleport our way to the Academy of Metal. Then our final stop, uuuuhhhhhhhhh," Yakko held that one for nearly an entire minute before he answered. "I have no idea." He ended his sentence. "Maybe we should review the cryptic messages all of the guardians gave us." Dot stated. "I'll translate!" Yakko stated with sarcasm. This time it was Dot's turn to roll her eyes at her brother. "Number one: When six are as one, the spell will be revealed." Dot recalled. "I think that one is about us." Yakko stated, "You know six of us and eight guardians, one of them even taught us a little about being a family." "Number two: When all is lost and you have no more to give, find the strength that lies deep within." Dot said. "I think that has something to do with the same thing you did to become Queen Angelina temporarily." Yakko responded. "Ok, number three: Upon the last if he should fall, give heed to thy friends to break this wall." Dot recalled. "Oh great, we have to knock down a wall. Let's make sure we have our mallets up-to-date." Yakko stated sarcastically. Dot gave her brother a dirty look. "Number four: Look not upon these mortal shelves, look instead inside thy selves." Dot recalled as she remembered the ditzy air guardian. "Uuuuuuhhhhh, probably a hint to the location of the spell itself. Remember all of the guardians tell us that 'the spell of wishes cannot be found materially'." Yakko reminded everyone. "Ok, Number five: the last guardian may open the gate if you look past your eyes and guide your fate." Dot stated. "I got nothing." Yakko said. "Some help you are." Dot retorted. "Number six: If you find yourself knocking on a silver door, repeat the phrase of the family lore." Dot said. "If you find a silver door, grab an ocarina and play this song." Yakko said then whipped out a blue ocarina from the hammerspace behind his back and played the Legend of Zelda's song of time. "How do you know that song anyway?" Dot asked slightly confused and annoyed. Yakko simply grinned at her. "And finally: Don't give up hope, you're almost there. The final test is in the center of the star." Dot recalled. She looked at her brother who was simply shaking his head with confusion. "Nothing?" the girl asked. "Nothing." Yakko responded in disappointment. He was disappointed in himself for not being able to figure out two of them. "So, what do we do?" Wakko asked slightly worried. "We go the last academy and get the last bit of cryptic advice from the metal guardian." Yakko explained.
We teleported just like we did when we were tracking down the Academy of Nature and in approximately three hours, we arrived at the front doors of the Academy of Metal. How did we know? The doors were made out of oxidized steel, they were hard to open and we could see a four story tall iron suit of armor statue standing in the center of the arena from hundreds of yards away. As we marveled at the giant statue from outside of the academy, Yakko said to us, "How much you wanna bet that that is the metal guardian?" "You know what would be really funny?" Dot asked. "What?" Wakko said to her. "If there was a smaller creature than me inside that thing and it was merely a mechanized suit of armor or something." She answered. "That would be just cliché." Yakko retorted. "Although, I get the feeling that we are going to have a lot of fun with this one." If the giant metal suit of armor in the middle of the academy had sweat glands, we would see him really sweat by now. However, it simply stood there like it was a simple giant statue or something.
"First things first," Yakko stated, "We need to find a way around those rusty metal doors." Some loud noises could be heard from around the giant metal statue as if there was rusted metal trying to move. It was pretty obvious that the Warners were getting on the guardian's nerves, however he remained still as...well...a statue. It took almost everything we had to simply pry those rusted doors open. Wakko tried to take a crack at it by himself and struck the doors with one of his many mallets. It was pretty amusing, rather than the doors swinging open in a flash, like he was used to, the doors barely budged and Wakko found himself vibrating like a tuning fork a couple of feet in reverse. When he finished vibrating he simply collapsed on his butt and wobbled his head around like a bobble head. Apparently, that knocked him for a loop a little bit.
Yakko and Runt made an effort to push the doors open with their shoulders. By the time they ran out of steam, their shoulders were extremely sore. "Lemmie try something." Dot said then she backed up so that she was in the giant statue's view and opened her eyes wide and gave it her "cute" face. "Pweeze let us in mister guardian. We promise to be good." There was no response from the statue. Dot took that as resistance so she went into an even cuter look and pulled out a lollipop. "Pweezy-squeezy?" she then said to the iron suit of armor. Still nothing from it, so she grabbed Ace and motioned for him to give it the cute look along side of her and she begged again, "Pweezy-squeezy-weezy-peezy?" Finally, the doors began to open by themselves as if they were being pulled and shifted by an invisible force. Dot let Ace jump to the ground and we hurried inside the academy as Dot stated, "Works every time."
The academy was the exact same design as all of the other ones. However it was almost completely built out of metal rather than wood and stone. Even the support pillars, which are usually made of stone and have elemental designs carved in them, were plain and made completely of metal. The books in the library rested on metal shelves. The only wood in the entire building were the lunch tables the classroom desks and chairs. It structure was old as well. All of the building was oxidized and beginning to rust away. It was pretty apparent that the only thing holding the building up was the guardian's power. We made our way to the arena to confront the guardian and the moment we entered, we were face-to-face with its foot. This thing being larger than the minotaur guardian, we decided that it was going to take some effort to figure out how to get around this thing. That was until the tip of a giant sword crashed into the ground behind us. "Uuuuhhhhhh, I think it's a combat test." Yakko blurted out. "Ya think?" We all responded in unison. Yakko simply gave us that goofy grin until the guardian began dragging his sword tip around in the dirt in our direction. "Scatter!" Ace yelled to our group, then he entered sage mode and flew up to the guardian to tackle him in the face. Ace's attempt was abruptly blocked by the suit of armor's enormous shield. (Yes, a shield.) The small kitten was temporarily knocked silly by the impact to his head and began plummeting to the ground.
Still dragging the sword tip around in the direction of the closest member of our team, we looked like a bunch of chickens with our heads cut off, simply running around randomly. Dot, had escaped into the actual academy and tried to find a way to make it to the second level classrooms. When she did, she found herself staring at a segment of the guardian's loin cloth. "That'll wake ya up in the morning." She stated sarcastically. "Good night everybody!" Yakko yelled to her as he sprinted by, trying to avoid the giant sword. Dot then tried to think quickly to find a way to get to the top floor. Suddenly she slapped her forehead as she remembered, "I still have my spell." She looked around and saw Ace trying to make another attempt at the guardian's head. The little Warner placed her first finger and her middle together, put her lips around them, inhaled deeply, and whistled to the kitten as loudly as she could. Hearing Dot's whistle, Ace screeched to a halt, turned toward her and zoomed up to the Warner girl. Dot quickly whispered her plan into the kitten's ear and Ace gave a big grin, indicating that he was going to enjoy her plan.
Ace dashed back at the guardian and threw a couple fireballs at it. The guardian pulled his shield up to block the fireballs but failed to notice the kitten speeding up and swerving around the shield. With a loud "klong", Ace smashed head-long into the guardian's head and knocked the helmet right off and knocked himself silly once again. Ace somehow was able to maintain his levitation spell and simply floated away as if he was in outer space. Now was Dot's turn, she mentally quoted the words for the levitation spell she and Ace had studied in the magic space nearly a year ago and imagined herself as light as a feather. She began to lift in the air and hover for a short period. When she opened her eyes she just had to comment, "And to think, when I reach mid-teens, I'll be constantly thinking I'm overweight." Then she focused on her objective and quickly flew in the direction of the guardian's shoulders. Avoiding the shield and the arm with the sword in it, she maneuvered up to the guardian and landed on its shoulder. Peering in, all she could see was a deep hole with light pouring in from slits in the armor's boots and grieves. "Oh this is too easy." She stated just before she jumped into the giant suit of armor.
"Aah, what are you doing? Get out of there. That's just weird!" the guardian suddenly began freaking out as little Dot dove into the dark abyss of his armor. He began dancing around for a while and the rest of us not only had to avoid the giant guardian feet, but his falling sword and shield as well. We decided that it was safer in the rusty library than out here with a polka dancing suit of armor. Suddenly he stopped moving around as simply was trying to use his arms to reach in and pull the little girl out of him. The slits in his leg began lighting up one by one moving down like an elevator. When it reached the bottom there was the small sound of a bell and then the lights traveled back up the leg. The same thing happened on the other leg and this time the guardian had noticed the strange occurrences in his lower appendages. A short time later, Dot climbed out of the armor and sat on the rim of its neck. "So, what did ya find in there?" Wakko called to his sister. "Two malls and a candy store! Come on!" She said as she gestured to her brothers to join her up there. She was just about to jump back in to go play around again when the guardian grabbed her by the waist with his fore finger and thumb, and flung her away as he placed his helmet back on his shoulders. Half way through her flight, Dot opened up a parachute from the hammerspace behind her back and floated down safely. The guardian simply watched, dumbfounded.
As the little Warner floated gently to the ground, the guardian said, "Don't ever do that again!" He stopped for a short while and then continued on by saying, "The spell of wishes cannot be found materially, but the one you seek is in the depths, of a castle where dead kings weep. Find the sword of shadow and light, and discover what makes the world so right. The guardian you face is the last you see. A wish to make for you, not me." "So...we won?" Yakko asked slightly confused. "Yes." The guardian stated with frustration. "But, how did we win? I thought this was a combat test." Wakko asked even more confused than his brother. "You made me laugh." The guardian answered seriously. Yakko leaned toward his brother and said under his breath, "I never heard him laugh. Did you?" Wakko simply shrugged his shoulders. Not wanting to upset a giant suit of armor, they simply grinned at him.
"The last trial awaits you now. You may camp here if you wish, I will not disturb you." Suddenly, the suit of armor sat down and began to fall apart piece by piece. When the entire thing had collapsed to the ground, a humanoid figure emerged from the clouds of dust. When the dust settled our group could see the true shape of the guardian. It was a Valkyrian, much like Vuloc. However, he had a bronze colored military hair cut and was wearing bronze samurai armor. It was Dot's turn to go gaga over a guardian now and she stiffened up, hearts began beating in her eyes and she howled, "Helloooooo Nurse!" She then rushed up to him and gave him a big smooch on the lips. Yakko simply turned to me and stated, "Girls, go fig." The guardian chuckled slightly and gently put Dot down on the ground. "If you were the guardian the whole time, then what was with the suit of armor?" Yakko asked. "I was hoping you would underestimate me and think me as slow." He responded. "We're not battle oriented." Yakko informed the guardian. "We just wanna give the queen a piece of our minds for putting us up to this in the first place." "The queen should be figuring out the location of the final test by now. I'll see if I can locate the clues she left behind for you." The guardian answered. He walked through the class rooms looking for something until he made his way into the third classroom, out of sight from our group. It was there he heard a frightening growling sound. When he turned around, he was overtaken by the same shadow that took Nymph. We could hear his horrified cry from where we were at and rushed to see what had happened.
When we got there, the only thing left of him was one of his wrist gauntlets. The room was completely trashed and there were the remnants of a shredded map. Yakko picked up one of the shreds and looked at it. It appeared like a piece that displayed location of the Academy of Frost. The difference was that there were two lines coming off of it. One heading southwest and one headed south-southwest. "Wait a minute." Yakko exclaimed. Then he pulled out our map and placed the shred in its proper location. "Why didn't I see this before?" He then asked himself. The rest of us were searching the room for other signs of where the metal guardian might have gone, so we didn't even notice Yakko piecing together the clue left behind by whatever did this. Taking out a pen from his own pocket and a ruler from the hammerspace behind his back, he traced the line from the Academy of Frost to the Academy of Thunder. Then the line from the Academy of Frost to the Academy of Earth. Removing the piece and completing the connections, Yakko began to see what the queen wanted to tell them. He then traced lines from the Academy of Thunder to the Academy of Wind and down to the Academy of Earth. He then traced lines connecting the Academies of Thunder and Earth to all the rest of the academies, eventually drawing the shape of the mark on Ace's forehead. And smack-dab in the center of the star mark's shape stood the Silver Palace. "I know where the final test is!" Yakko shouted. The rest of the group flocked around him to see what he had discovered. Things started to become clear as we gazed at the connect-the-dots Yakko had made. "The Silver Palace?" Dot gasped. "Kind of cliché, but it makes sense." I said. "Hey, that's the mark on my head." Ace stated. "I'm still completely confused." Wakko said in all seriousness. We turned our attention to the poor lost Warner and Yakko shifted the map over to Wakko, pointed at the lines he had made and said, "The final test is in the center of the star." Wakko carefully examined the map and said, "Oh, thanks."